


Freedom

by RedFlagsAndDiamonds



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Charlotte's Backstory, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Physical Abuse, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10319786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds
Summary: Charlotte Jenkins always knew what direction her life would take... whether the world around her accepted it or not.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first story for "Mercy Street", inspired by an anonymous prompter who offered the opening sentence, "Charlotte Jenkins knew her own mind."

Charlotte Jenkins knew her own mind. Not a quality many considered admirable in a woman. For any man, woman, or child of her color, it was entirely unsafe - when so many saw them as inferior, naturally subservient, even subhuman. All too maddening how the white gentleman and ladies never managed to notice that the blood welling from whip-broken skin was just as ruddy as their own.

She’d been six years old - by her own retrospective count - when she’d announced into the semi-darkness of the tiny cabin that one day she’d read the bible and write books the same as any of the fine gentlemen up north. In the moment before her grandmother’s scarred hand slapped across her face, Charlotte could have sworn that her father’s quiet half-smile was illuminated by the last few flickers of the candle.

She’d been too young to understand then, but through the recollecting eyes of a young woman she knew that simple expression hadn’t held indulgence, but hope.

In April of 1853,  Lucinda Jenkins - “Miz Lucy,” as she was known to so much of the farm for so long - married Mr. Vernon Sterling in a shower of orange blossoms, champagne, and valuable human wedding gifts, thus transforming Charlotte from the fields to Charlotte Jenkins. Many would have simply called the new title a mere distinction, a way to separate Mrs. Sterling’s belongings from those of her new husband. But Charlotte, twenty-three and a sharp-minded, quick-witted belle in every right but name, wore it proudly as an identity made anew - the “coming-out” presentation that the world denied her.

The promise that a barefoot child had sworn to herself and her family one dark evening was never forgotten; slipping about the mansion nursery while the governess ran the children through their letters by rote had been difficult, but not impossible to a determined soul. By age thirteen, she could read the title of every volume in Mr. Jenkins’ vast library, and years later when the wagon carried her, with many others, down the bumpy back lane off to the Sterling estate, she thought of the dozens of swirling cursive letters stitched by moonlight into her petticoat hem, and brushed her calf against the rough texture for reassurance.

As it began with a child’s innocent hope, it was a child’s innocent naïveté that brought down calamity. Seven-year old Toby had been so proud to spell his name in the dirt by the quarter - that sweet little boy did have a streak of self-admiration at least ten miles wide - and it had likely taken only the threat of a beating to make him confess who had secretly taught him the “trick.”

By spousal agreement, it was deemed Mrs. Sterling’s duty to take a cold iron to Charlotte’s body, dashing the solid, dead-weight wedge of metal against her limbs as she bit her lip through against the pain, swallowing back cries of rage - not at the woman lashing out against her, but at an existence reduced to nothing but mindless toil and anguish.

She’d slipped away in the middle of a frosty October night, brambles tearing at her bruised skin, freezing water soaking her thin clothes with every river, stream, and puddle she fought or splashed through. There hadn’t been a thought in her head except the need to keep moving, driven by the desperation for a true life and, far less grandly, the mere human need for an escape from pain.

 

* * *

 

“Do you need to rest? Maybe I should carry -!”

“Would you leave off being ‘Dr. Diggs’ for half of a moment, and help me up these steps?” Charlotte interrupted, hitching up the wide layers of her Sunday dress - made even wider of late as she let out the seams more and more every few weeks, to accommodate the new, tiny hope growing steadily - and, her husband constantly assured her with a smile, healthily - within her body.

With a good natured shake of his head, Samuel gently laid a supportive hand against the small of her back and allowed himself to partly lead and partly be led through the crowds and up the thick white rise of steps towards the vast, freshly domed building as all of Washington City milled around them in heightening suspense.

“I have to ask…” he said slowly, squeezing her gloved hand in one of his own. “Have you thought that… what if it doesn’t…”

“What if it doesn’t what?” she replied, brown eyes wide with disbelief. “If it doesn’t pass?”

She breathed deeply, the child stirring quietly inside, and turned to gaze upwards at the colossal bronze statue that topped the dome, a beautiful, helmeted woman crowned with stars and clasping a sword in one hand, laurels with the other.

“Oh no…” Charlotte murmured, a shadow of a barely-remembered half-smile crossing her face, as a soft breeze caressed the skin of her cheek and lifted the feather on her bonnet. “She won’t let that happen.”

She turned back to face her husband.

“And neither will I.”

With a loving chuckle, Samuel drew her close and kissed her gently, on the top step of the Capitol.

He knew better than to argue. After all, Charlotte Jenkins-Diggs knew her own mind.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, taken from the name of the figure atop the US capitol building. :)
> 
> The process in which Charlotte gains her last name is based on historical incidents in which enslaved individuals would take the surname of the slave holder's wife, if she brought slaves from her former household as wedding gifts. Likely, this was meant to differentiate "property" between the spouses in case of divorce.


End file.
